Note-Taking

             In this week's chapter focus in Improving Adolescent Literacy, the authors, Frey and Fisher, explore the theoretical  of note taking and note making, and the practical uses and needs for them in the classroom environment.
            The authors assert that in their conclusions of prominent research, students who not only take notes, but take them with a structure, purpose, and strategy. They also stress the importance of teachers using classroom instructional time to instruct students on good, clear techniques for note taking during lectures and note making while reading text independently. I agree with the authors, that especially in the content areas, teaching students how to make notes that will be beneficial to them for study purposes is extremely necessary.  From what I have personally observed, when a student gets into high school and college, and has no background for study skills and proper ways to record and organize the vast amounts of information, it can be very difficult for him or her to keep up.
          One significant topic that the authors address that I found interesting was their differentiation between "note taking" and "note making," saying that note taking is the action of recording note from lecture, and note making is the recording of notes from printed text. I think this is a significant distinction between the two, although I do not know if I wholly agree with the authors that their should be a distinction if the notes are taken correctly with the objectives of the student in mind. I actually believe that notes should be representative of what the student feels important or significant that it needs to be written down in order for the student to remember it, or the interpretation of material written down for personal understanding. I think this is virtually the same when watching/listening to a lecture and reading a textbook, even though you do have the text to look back at later. If I were going to distinguish between the two, I would define note taking as recording exact words/definition/concepts, and note making as constructing understandings/conclusions/summaries/analysis.
         Also, I absolutely loved the "dictologos" activity done by Mr. Herrera in the text (pg. 125) to teach students the value of detailed listening and selective scripting! I think this is a great tool to use in the first few days of school, when getting students'  minds off summer and ready to learn!
          My questions and concerns about this are, should teachers evaluate notes made by students, or require students to do them in a certain format? Or should we show them ways, and let them chose to make notes that are most meaningful for themselves? Also, how do we show students, or give evidence of what will happen if they take good notes?